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Chris Woakes is a very good and admirable cricketer. He didn’t have the best of time in the last Ashes but has since bounced back in the shorter formats. If he were to play a Test match, he would not doubt take a bunch of wickets. Nevertheless, England should pretty much always play Mark Wood instead, who may or may not perform as effectively, and quite often not.
Now the first thing to say is that we like Chris Woakes very much. We believe he will play plenty of Tests for England and it stands to reason that this also means that we believe he will take many Test wickets and consequently bring us a great deal of Test joy (which is a very real and important brand of joy).
He is also widely perceived to be a very nice man. If in thirty years time our daughter were to tell us that she was going to marry Chris Woakes, we’d say: “Chris Woakes is almost 60. This age gap is unseemly.”
However, if by the magic of time travel he was the exact same age as her, we’d say: “This is evidence of real actual time travel. This is incredible.” But once we’d dealt with the seismic technological development (and really, what else is there to say?) we’d say that on balance, given some of the other historical figures she could have ended up with, Chris Woakes is an adequate and acceptable choice.
Although actually, now that we think about it, isn’t Chris Woakes married? Maybe we’d be concerned about why he was running away from his own time period given that he had a wife and a burgeoning international cricket career back then. That would be a bit suspicious.
Anyway, the point is that Chris Woakes is an agreeable-to-likeable man. With hindsight the whole ‘would you be happy for him to marry your daughter’ thought experiment was a bit of a misstep on our part given their respective ages.
(Also, a quick note to say that we’d rank Mark Wood slightly above Chris Woakes on the likeability scale because he can be genuinely funny – and really, what other worthwhile quality would you ever look for in a person?)
(Another quick note. No matter what else he does, likeability will always be something of an uphill struggle for Craig Overton (remember him?) because he will always retain the air of someone who maybe once did a racism.)
(Yet another quick note. If he ever stops to think about it, Jamie Overton will probably resent the fact that he also faces an uphill struggle for likeability because of the tarring-by-association that comes with being a twin.)
(Final quick note. We’ve just thought how Jamie Overton can easily avoid this. He should cast Craig as “the bad twin” which would of course make him the good twin, ergo likeable.)
Here’s the thing about likeability: at no point did Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath slow their wicket-taking as a result of our feelings about them during their playing days. Likeability and Test performance are not really connected and when you’re picking a team, it’s 100 per cent about how effective you think the player is going to be. (We’re going to be honest here, we’re going to flatly contradict this point a little later in the article.)
So what does Chris Woakes actually do? Let’s take a look at England’s bowlers to see what each of them offers and let’s do it according to Steve Harmison’s Theory of Units because that is something we fundamentally agree with.
Swing bowling: Jimmy Anderson is pretty much the best swing bowler there’s ever been.
Tall bowling: Current form notwithstanding, Stuart Broad has been a very good tall bowler.
Reverse swing bowling: Wiser men than us might disagree, but from what we’ve seen we feel like Ben Stokes has a legitimate case to be considered England’s best reverse swing bowler. Certainly, most of the occasions when he ‘makes things happen‘ seem to be occasions when the ball is also reverse swinging for him.
Spin bowling: Moeen Ali is the man who makes the ball bounce a bit funny by spinning it with his fingers.
So what does Chris Woakes add to the palette of things? Does he do anything different to the people listed above? Does he do any of the things listed above better than the people listed above?
Not really. In contrast, we could also add…
Fast bowling: Mark Wood.
Now, we can’t help but concede that Mark Wood is not always a fast bowler. Sometimes – perhaps even a lot of the time – he is just as fast-medium as everyone else. In fact it is not all that uncommon for him to bowl less quickly than Chris Woakes, who we would generally categorise as ‘brisk’.
But Mark Wood can bowl quickly. This is a thing that he is capable of doing and on the occasions that he manages it, he adds an extra thing to the bowling attack, which improves as a consequence.
When Mark Wood bowls quickly, he is electrifying. Chris Woakes is not electrifying. This is not meant as criticism of Chris Woakes because the truth is that very few players are ever electrifying. Being electrifying is a rare and valuable thing and that is why whenever you have a choice between a player who is possibly electrifying and one who definitely is not electrifying, you should always pick the possibly electrifying player even if there’s a more than reasonable chance that he will actually not perform as well as the other guy.
Cricket is meant to be fun and those rare moments when you think to yourself ‘something is happening’ are the most fun of all. Andrew Flintoff’s career record is famously nondescript, but he will always retain a warm place in our heart for all those occasions when he made us feel like something was happening.
There is also the small matter of retaining Mark Wood as a Test cricketer. Not so long ago we wrote at length about how the two Tests against New Zealand in 2018 potentially represented the final chance for him to have a career in the longest and most memorable format of the game.
Chris Woakes has been in the England Test team enough that we’re pretty confident he will be picked again. Wood, on the other hand, seems to exist in a constant state of maybe having already played his last Test without anyone actually realising it.
Wood should be picked and then hopefully something magical will happen and we can all stop worrying about the game fracturing into pieces for a day or two.
Similar deliveries:
How well will Chris Woakes have to play before he’s in England’s overseas first XI?
Chris Woakes with the old ball, Mark Wood for his third Test in three weeks – dissecting England’s latest omission of a spinner for a day/night Test match
Mark Wood is playing The Entertain Yourselves Test
Test cricket is what Mark Wood wants to play – but even if he’s keen enough and fit enough, modern cricket won’t allow him to do so
That is an excellent and correct long-form piece. None of which changes the fact that it won’t happen, sadly.
Also we need a leftie.
Amazing example of SEO copywriting in action, King.
If you wanted to, you could make a below average career out of stringing out ideas beyond their credible limit.
Oh.
I wouldn’t bet on Woods to be able to run to the end of our drive without picking up an injury (though there are quite a few children’s toys that could cause accidents so it’s not a completely fair challenge).
To whit, his Test career will – at best – be short and interrupted. As such, it will surely be characterised by all the negatives that come from “not getting a proper run in the side”.
Flintoff is underrated
he had one of the best economy rate with the old ball in ODIs (old rules with single ball before 2 new balls rule)
he could also hit 6rs like Afridi. So Flintoff would have walked into any world ODI XI of his time
If you think we loved Flintoff for his ODI economy rate, you’re incorrect.
More importantly, what of the future of Cricket Badger? The cliff hanger about ‘hibernation’ at the end was worthy of EastEnders.
Why don’t you just come out and say it – has the Badger got a job in the Trump administration?
It has not.
More to follow.
I’m trying to figure out how this actually works. We are 30 years hence and Princess Cricket has aged naturally into her prime. Chris Woakes then appears, aged 29 years and 14 days, having not aged from today. As he hasn’t aged in his own personal time , he must have travelled directly from now to his future tryst. In which case I would have thought that the white haired veteran cricket journalist would have thought “That’s Chris Woakes, the England all rounder who inexplicably vanished in the middle of the tour of New Zealand, I wondered what had happened to him” either before or after his amazement at the technological achievement, but probably before his assessment of his virtues as a Wellsian son-in-law.
There is also the possibility that he might be Lyndhursting it, a la Goodnight Sweetheart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodnight_Sweetheart_(TV_series)
I think we all know it’s probably a cryonic (cryogenic) freezing a la Futurama, or possibly a Flight of the Navigator situation.
Highlight of that trailer is 1:43 to 2:00, for those with limited time and maximum desire to experience the essence of 1986.
Wouldn’t it be better/easier if Princess Cricket were to meet and fall in love with some fine young cricketers of her own generation.
Bert Junior might fit the bill.
As might the Fran and Gene progeny – from “the only really good thing to ever come out of the Ged’s Team v Charley The Gent’s Team cricket matches:
http://ianlouisharris.com/2007/06/26/zyen-v-the-childrens-society-cricket-match-holland-park-26-june-2007/
Agree with all of this.
On the one hand, Woakes is probably our second best bowler at this point.
On the other Woakes is more of an Anderson (best bowler) replacement really. It is harsh on him, but if you want a toolkit of stuff to beat a team then he doesn’t make it out of the 5 seamers – he just does what Anderson does but not as good. That will work on green tops (and will proably be fine for the next 8 Tests), but then we will reach the next overseas Test that isn’t in NZ or SA and have a miserly but toothless bowling attack (again).
I suppose there is an argument at the moment for playing all 5 and dropping Vince if Stokes either can’t bowl because of injury or doesnt have the rhythm to be trusted to bowl a dozen overs a day
It’s a fair point, that. Woakes’ batting average must compare reasonably to several of the top six.
I think we should pick Vince as a bowler.
Agree.
In other news: Mason Crane’s back.
As in returned, it’s not like he has…
…oh.
Well, he doesn’t have that.
Just remembered that we were going to start with this article with a whole Milltown Brothers thing that would have added at least another couple of hundred words.
Livid.
Has your imperial realm thought about entering the heady world of Instagram?
What would we upload? Screengrabs of Cricinfo?
Oh, yes. I was trying to somehow link my page to King Cricket site. Guess it’s not the best platform
Animals being indifferent to cricket equipment in unusual places?
Big fan of the Warwickshire Wizard. His batting is hugely underrated. I’d be tempted to keep him and drop Broad.
Opening bowler partnerships come in phases. Gough and Caddick made way for Harmison and Hoggard, who then made way for Anderson and Broad. The time for another new chapter is near.
50 parantheses, that is awesome. Maybe 10, but it’s like Karthik’s 8 ball 29 today to win a final. Besides the point. The reason I wanted to comment today is my relatability with ‘something is happening’. Shared Flintoff love aside, why we here worship Tendulkar is how he twined ‘something is happening’ with a famously descript career record. ‘Making something happen’ is our selectorial basis, why we selected Sehwag over many others. That is why – Select Mark Wood, if the other four are any good 😛
And fair enough, this is English cricket, but did you genuinely not enjoy Warne in his playing days?
Enjoyment and liking are not the same thing. When Australia played England, we most definitely did not like them and, to be honest, for the most part didn’t much enjoy them either.
It was a very long run of defeats for which they were largely responsible.
If the choice is between Woakes and Wood then I would pick Wood. As impressive as Woakes was at times during the series I don’t think he would even have played had the dark night of Bristol been on tour instead of helping the local constabulary with their enquiries.
It was knight before the autocorrect got to my fat fingers I swear. This is why I should never ever comment on anything from my phone.